


“i’m sorry. i didn't mean to.”

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [26]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Crushes, Detectives, F/F, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mystery, Obliviousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21576745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: PART 2The Wells & Wong Detective Society is launching an investigation into George Mukherjee and Alexander Arcady, believing them to be in love. To mirror this development, the Junior Pinkertons are launching an investigation into Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, believing them to be in love.Modern AUWritten for the twenty-sixth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/George Mukherjee, Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong, Daisy Wells/Hazel Wong
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Kudos: 16





	“i’m sorry. i didn't mean to.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an amalgamation of headcanon from the amazing MMU discord, particularly from the person this is dedicated to. Furthermore, this oneshot will be one of a few from this oneshot series set in the same universe continuing the same storyline.

**HAZEL**

On Wednesday, George accosts me outside of English Language. “Wong!” he says in an urgent hiss, so different from his languid London drawl. “Can I have your ear for a moment?”

“Who did you kill?” I ask, looping my arm through the one he offers out. “Was it Alexander? I didn’t see him walk past out of drama.”

With a snort, he says, “Ah, yes, because Alex isn’t here, it means that his best friend brutally murdered him.”

“I never said brutally!”

“Alex is in the Support Unit.” The Support Unit is a part of our school for pastoral things and the San. The specific part George is referring to is what we call The Den, where students with anxiety, autism, issues with sound, and anything you can name go. “That prick of a drama TA accosted Alex to perform his monologue to her until he had a panic attack.”

I roll my eyes. George, Alexander, and Daisy, all have a passionate hatred for this TA, which means I also hate her by association. “Oh, of course she did. Barny should give her a lecture about it.”

“I bloody _hope_ she does. Twitting may be terrifying but nothing is scarier than Barny’s ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ face.”

“Anyway!” I bump my shoulder against his. “What did you need me for?”

He sighs, long and drawn-out. “You know those dreadful rumours that swirl about me?”

I swallow a gasp. _Shit_. He isn’t going to tell me what Alex told me just yesterday, is he? “Yes? The ones about you bedding half of the football team?”

He snorts. “When you put it like that, Wong, it makes me sound like the worst sort of deviant! Really, it’s only Gallager, Fletcher and TJ, all before we did out GCSE exams at all. Two of them don’t even play football.”

“ _Otto_ Gallagher?” I blurt as I gawk. “I had no idea, he’s the only one who hasn’t said anything!”

“Neither have Fletcher and Thomas Jenkins. They have only been swept up in the rumours surrounding their teammates. The others like adding to my pretty-boy reputation and it helps. Furthermore, _that_ only happened with Gallagher. Drunkenly making out with somebody does not constitute as bedding them.”

With a bad taste in my mouth — it is a horrid mental image — I ask, “How many of those… encounters were related to investigating?”

Daisy and George spend their lives kissing people because of cases. Alexander has only done it once and that was to get Clementine Delacroix off of him. I never have and never wish to.

“Fletcher and TJ. I’m unaware if either of them actually recall it. Gallager was because… well, myself behaving like a normal teenager, I suppose.”

I cast him a look. “We don’t act like that often enough.”

“Like what?”

“Normal.”

He squeezes my arm. “No… I suppose we do not. Anyhow, relating to that rumour is my issue: it is not only the football team. Oh, Hazel, don’t look so aghast. It isn’t as bad as it sounds. You see, if take my reputation for being the prom royalty for experimenting and questioning sportsmen, and hold it up against the exact wording of the rumours that swirl about Alex…”

I have to pretend to be shocked, and I privately thank The Rue for my acting skills. “You’re joking!” I exclaim, my eyes wide. It is shocking, even if you are hearing it for the second time. Running out of things to say already, I borrow the phrasing I used in yesterday’s conversation. “You… you… you and _Alexander_ ? Alexander _Arcady_ ? star pitcher of the cricket team, resident All-American heartthrob, the person rumoured to have fallen for prom royalty? _Your best friend_?”

He draws his face into a mask of indifference. “Are you taking issue, Wong?”

“No!” I withdraw my arm to grab his shoulder. “That is not it at all! I was just astonished at… well, how it is _true_.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “Now, to turn to tables on you, dear Hazel Wong—”

Oh no. Oh _no_ . The very thing I have been twisting myself in knots trying to avoid. I should not like her and I wish that I did not more than I have wished anything before. I have prayed to the gods I do not believe in to try and rid myself of my crush, of the sparks that fly unchecked across my skin at contact, of the daydreams I should be having about _boys_ that instead see Daisy dancing through my imagination.

Since I was twelve, I have believed that the want to be close to Daisy was how everybody experienced friendship, until Ah Lan — a close friend of my family who is two years younger than me and lives in my home of Hong Kong — laughed at my attempt to help him describe a friendship for a piece of creative writing. “That is not describing friendship!” he exclaimed to me in Cantonese. “That is love. Where did you learn that?”

After a pause, he realised and crowed my name. “英!”

Apprehensive, I replied, “Yes?”

“It’s Daisy. You are in love with Daisy.” He told me this in English, then in Cantonese, then in his heavily-accented English once again.

Ah Lan was elated.

I was terrified.

If only I could tear off my skin and step out of it, into the skin of a blonde English girl who falls in love with blond English (or American) boys.

I should very much like to tear off all my skin, even if it did expose the fact that I am all _wrong_ underneath. If I was bruised and bleeding, perhaps it would distract my family from the utter infatuation for my best friend that glows unchecked from under my skin.

Perhaps my crush would seep out with the blood.

“Hazel?” George says, and I blink through tears — when did they appear? I cannot be certain but they are blurring my vision, so I am unable to see — to see him standing in front of me, one hand gripping my arm and the other on my cheek, catching a tear with his finger. “Hazel, dear, can you breathe?”

“No,” I gasp out, finding that it catches in my throat when I try to speak. “I can’t— George, I can’t— I can’t _breathe_ —”

For a moment, I watch him flash his eyes about in panic. George does not do emotions, finding them a tangled web of things he does not understand. While Daisy doesn’t either, she knows how to deal with _my_ emotions. I imagine that he’s looking about for her. 

“ _Help_ —”

I only ever cry for help when I feel as if I am about to die. 

With one hand, George’s takes my own and places it on his chest. “There. Feel my breathing, Hazel? Follow how I breathe, alright?”

I try to breathe with him but I hiccup and swear and it makes me furious. “I’m— I’m so–orry!”

“No, it’s alright, you’re doing well. Breathe with me again?”

I manage to shudder in a breath not wrought with tears and after that, several more. At first, my throat aches with the force of the breaths but after that it changes, improves, relaxes.

When I can breathe again without aid, I slump against George. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to.”

“No, don’t apologise!” he says, circling my shoulders with his arms. “Now, let us go and find our detectives.”

* * *

**DAISY**

Alexander is driving me insane.

I followed his path to The Den after drama while George went to find Hazel. It was better that way. The ever-observant George has picked up the minutest hints of Alexander acting _odd_. His starts and jumps have been coming in fits and starts more regular than usual and it is obvious that George is the cause. He’s hurt by this — I can tell — and it’s ridiculous that he is.

George Mukherjee is an idiot.

It is obvious to me that Alexander is gone over him. His bursts of worry are also taken over by bubbles of joy, where he whirls with laughter and smiles non-stop and doesn’t seem to mind that his sleeves are too short.

I messaged Hazel in the middle of drama.

_He’s in love._

_Which one?_ came the reply, followed by a link to the Little Mermaid song called ‘She’s In Love’.

_Both. Mostly Alexander. George is better at hiding it._

That’s true. George’s only suggestions that he might feel more than his rotation of four Alexander-related emotions (which are exasperation, fondness, happiness, and happiness-dialled-to-eleven) are the involuntary ones. His pupils widen and his eyes brighten. He can tell Alexander’s footsteps when he walks into the room. When Alexander's voice careens into the room with its grating accent, he turns to listen at once.

Naturally, I have to make sure Alexander is less clueless so this case gets less painful to spectate.

It’s not a job I want to be doing. Alexander is irritating as shit. 

“Alexander?” I call as I step into The Den.

Miss Lappet (the teacher minding the room) shoots me a disapproving glare.

“I need to make sure he’s alright,” I say, putting on my best innocent voice that doesn’t work as well as it did when the underneath of my hair wasn’t purple.

She gestures tiredly to one of the beds on the ground.

When I peer over the partition, I see Alexander worrying a hand along the hem of his white long-sleeved t-shirt, his blue waterproof that he wears inside (it’s very cold) discarded at his feet. “Alright?” I ask.

He starts. “Daisy! what are you doing here?”

“Come to check on you,” I say, sitting on the carpet. “Against all my better judgement, I give a shit about you.”

Before I can say anything else, Alexander’s touched smile morphs into an astonishingly George-like smirk. “I’ve a question.”

“Right.”

I know exactly what he’s about to say.

“What’s with you and Hazel recently? You look at her like she’s made from all the stars in the sky, and would pull down the moon for her if she asked.”

I do not look at Hazel as if she is all the stars in the sky.

She _is_ all the stars in the sky, compressed into one perfectly flawed person with the universe hidden in dark eyes.

“I do not.”

The door opens before he can protest, and Hazel’s sweet voice rings out. “Daisy?”


End file.
